Cardinal Invariants and Eventually Different Functions

In this paper we study several kinds of maximal almost disjointfamilies. In the main result of this paper we show that forsuccessor cardinals , there is an unexpected connection betweeninvariants a_e(), b() and a certain cardinal invariant m_d(⁺)on ⁺. As a corollary we get for example the following result.For a successor cardinal , even assuming that ^< = and 2= ⁺, the following is not provable in Zermelo–Fraenkelset theory. There is a ⁺-cc poset which does not collapse andwhich forces a() = ⁺ < a_e() = ⁺⁺ = 2. We also apply the ideasfrom the proofs of these results to study a = a() and non(M).2000 Mathematics Subject Classification 03E17 (primary), 03E05(secondary).